It is unnecessary to go in detail into all the schemes devised by inventors and visionaries for propelling vessels by mechanical means. Several of them from time to time suggested placing wheels on the outside of the boat, and “turning the wheeles by some provision so that the wheeles make the boat goe,” to quote William Bourne’s proposition of 1578, but the “some provision” constituted a problem which he and many others found too much for them. David Ramsay in 1618 took out a patent “to make boats for carriages running upon water as swift in calms and more safe in storms than boats full sailed in great winds,” and twelve years later another patent is recorded to his credit for making ships and barges go against the tide. The optimism of these and other mechanical pioneers was wonderful; indeed, had their inventive genius only equalled their imagination, some of the difficulties which until comparatively recently baffled naval engineers and marine architects would have been long since overcome.
“Liburna” or Galley, worked by Oxen.
From Morisotus.
The webbed feet of water-birds suggested to many a form in which mechanical propulsion could be applied. This was only natural, as early shipbuilders took as their models the birds which they saw floating before them. In 1759 a Swiss pastor named Genevois published at Geneva a proposal to use an oar fitted with a foot which should expand when used for propelling a boat and contract when being moved forward through the water for another stroke. Genevois visited London in 1760 to lay his proposal before the Government. His propellers were to be worked by springs which in turn were to be compressed by a kind of cannon with a piston. A pamphlet which he issued at the time of his application to the Government contains the interesting statement that he had been informed that a Scotchman had propounded a scheme thirty years earlier for propelling vessels forward by the recoil from the firing of cannon over the stern. The gunpowder of the period made up in smoke what it lacked in power; hence, although the vessels of his day were not large, the ingenious Scot “found, by the experiments made for that purpose, that thirty barrels of Gun-powder had scarce forwarded the ship the space of ten Miles”; and it is not surprising that this means of mechanical propulsion shared the fate of all of its predecessors.[4]
[4] “Some New Inquiries tending to the Improvement of Navigation,” by J. A. Genevois, 1760.
Many other extravagant schemes might be quoted. Edward Ford in 1646 was quite modest in his patent to “bring little ships, barges, and vessels in and out of any havens without or against any small wind or tide,” to which he cautiously added the qualification “if the seas be not rough.” With the exception, however, of a few sporting proposals of which the Scotch Gunpowder Plot is a type, no advance in solving the problem of producing the power for propulsion was made for centuries. The burden of physical exertion had been shifted from men to animals, but that was all; and yet in every age during the last two thousand years there seem to have been many people who were acquainted with the expansive power of steam, a fact which makes this slow development the more remarkable.
The first person to observe the properties of steam, or at any rate the first to record his observations, was Hero of Alexandria in 120 B.C., but though he advanced from theory to practice, his æolipile does not seem to have answered any useful purpose. This machine consisted of a hollow glass ball supplied with steam at its axis. The steam escaped by means of a series of hollow tubes, placed at right angles and projecting from the globe at a circle on its circumference equidistant from the two poles, the tubes being closed at the ends and provided with orifices at the sides near the ends. Nothing came of his invention, so far as is known, and the æolipile remained an interesting toy and nothing else—a toy, however, which has the honour of being the first mechanical contrivance in which the expansive power of steam was used. After this, for many centuries, no attempt was made to use this great natural agency for the purpose of producing what Bacon called “fruits” for mankind. Unscrupulous priests worked “miracles” by this means for the edification of their flocks, and doubtless revived thereby many whose faith had become lukewarm. It never seems to have occurred to them that a far more direct means of moving mountains was already under their control.
At last in 1629 the use of steam as a means of producing power was suggested by Giovanni Branca of Loretto, who, apparently adopting a simplified form of Hero’s device, planned so that a jet of steam blew against a series of vanes arranged on the rim of a wheel.
In the seventeenth century also, that eccentric genius the second Marquis of Worcester published his “Century of Inventions.” In this he suggested a number of mechanical contrivances, some of which contained the fundamental ideas of later inventions, the most notable being that of a steam-engine with a piston and lever; but he does not seem to have designed any vessel which would justify the claim sometimes made on his behalf that he was the inventor of the steamboat.[5]